NSA declares war on general purpose computers
By Cory Doctorow
BoingBoing.net
Mon, Apr 13, 2015
NSA director Michael S Rogers says his agency wants “front doors” to all cryptography used in the USA, so that no one can have secrets it can’t spy on — but what he really means is that he wants to be in charge of which software can run on any general purpose computer.
Rogers’s proposal is no less stupid than the proposal made by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, but it’s even scarier in that Rogers runs a highly technical criminal organization with state backing and a history of attacking the security of American computing infrastructure by deliberately introducing vulnerabilities into computers used by American citizens, businesses, and government.
There’s no way to stop Americans — particularly those engaged in criminal activity and at risk from law enforcement — from running crypto without locking all computers, Ipad-style, so that they only run software from a government-approved “app-store.” The world teems with high quality, free, open crypto tools. Simply banning their integration into US products will do precisely nothing to stop criminals from getting their code from outside non-US vendors or projects. Only by attacking the fundamental nature of computing itself can the NSA hope to limit its adversaries’ use of crypto.
The Rest…HERE
